NEW DELHI: Concerned over the recent fire incidents in hospitals and nursing homes, including one at an ICU ward of a Rajkot hospital on Friday that claimed the lives of six Covid patients, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla on Monday wrote to all states and UTs stressing upon the need to ensure compliance of laid-down fire safety guidelines and meet the minimum requirements for a reasonable degree of safety from fire emergencies in hospitals.
“I would like to draw your kind attention towards occurrence of various fire incidents in hospitals/nursing homes in recent past. Non-adherence of fire safety measures authorities in their respective jurisdiction is a matter of concern,” Bhalla noted in a letter sent to all state chief secretaries and UT administrators.
“Recently six precious lives of COVID- 19 patients have been lost in a fire incident in ICU ward of a Hospital in Rajkot and eight lives were lost in a Hospital in Ahmedabad. At such a crucial time, when the country is fighting against COVID- 19 pandemic, utmost precaution needs to be taken to avoid such incidents in future,” he said while directing all concerned to immediately re-inspect/re-check all hospitals/nursing homes from the point of view of fire protection and means of escape to prevent recurrence of such fire incidences in future.
The home secretary underlined that the Directorate General (Fire Services, Civil Defence & Home Guards) under the home ministry had been issuing necessary advisories at regular intervals to the States/UTs — the latest being on November 28, 2020 — “so that suitable directions may be issued to ensure compliance of fire safety guidelines/various codes & standards and to ensure that proper fire safety measures are in place in all the buildings including hospitals/nursing homes”.
He added that guidelines have also been issued by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for hospital safety, laying down the provisions to establish the minimum requirements for a reasonable degree of safety from fire emergencies in hospitals.
While calling for a re-inspection of fire protection systems in place at all hospitals with a view to prevent recurrence of fire incidence in the future, Bhalla instructed the states to share the action taken report “at the earliest”.